Graphic Script Tools Version 0.3 Dave Ramsey ----------------------------------------------------------------- Version .3D - Updated for V4LIBD. Bob Dean July 5, 1990 ----------------------------------------------------------------- GST, (G)raphic (S)cript (T)ools, are a set of tools designed to allow the user to exploit the new extended TCAP in the Z-System. The current set of tools is minimal and does not represent a completed effort. In particular, the tools currently do not respect the Z-System quiet flag, nor do they check all the input parameters. This set is a very early set released to the user community for comments and suggestions. This library contains the following tools: BOX - which allows the user to draw boxes on the screen; ERABOX - to erase these boxes; HBAR - which allows the user to draw horizontal bars; VBAR - which allows the user to draw vertical bars; ERABAR - to erase these bars; LINE - to draw horizontal and vertical lines on the screen; ERALINE- to erase horizontal and vertical lines from the screen; CORNER - to draw one of the four corner graphic characters on the screen; ISEC - to draw one of the five intersection chars on the screen; GXYMSG - which allows the user to echo a line to the screen at a specific row and column; and GOTOXY - which places the cursor at a specific location on the screen. At this time, these tools comprise a complete set, at least from my own viewpoint. If anyone can suggest other tools that might be useful within ARUNZ and ZEX scripts, please feel free to let me know. Obviously, if you are an assembly language programmer, these tools are trivially simple. If you program yourself, take one as a template and add yet another tool to the set. If you don't program, let me know and I'll add it for you, if I understand what you want and if it makes sense to me. It is possible that these tools do not represent what the user community wants. It is for this reason that I have released these early versions - to get comments and to not waste my efforts if these are not the sorts of graphic script tools that are wanted. If you like what you see, let me know and I'll continue developing them. If not, well, I'll continue developing them for my own use but I certainly won't make as much effort to make them robust and reliant. And I might not bother to release them. In any case, leave a few comments about what you would want these tools to do. Or write to me at: Dave Ramsey 1188 Green Holly Drive Annapolis, MD 21401 (301) 757-8413 I can't accept collect calls (sorry!) but if you want to spend your nickel, I'll talk about whatever you'd like! Enhancements over version 0.1 include corrected stack initialization code, extended tcap awareness, and removal of self-modifying code. (We have to consider the future what with the Z280 slowly beginning to make its presence felt!) Some routines do check some of their parameters although none of them yet check all parameters. (I may develop some generic routines to check values for row, column, height, width, etc., that can be back-referenced at run-time against the Z-System TCAP. It will be another good exercise, I suppose.) Things to add in future versions include selection of STANDOUT or STANDEND (dim or reverse video versus highlighted text) for text messages and graphics objects, case selection switches for these tools (unless Jay Sage follows throw with his thoughts on providing access to the command line before it has been capitalized), and more Z-System awareness generally. One bug fixed in this version relates to stack usage. The 0.1 version setup a stack on the tail end of the CCP. This would obviously corrupt the CCP. I didn't notice this because I use ZCPR 3.3 and an RCP installed as an RSX. I hope that the version 0.1 tools didn't cause too many headaches! If anyone wants to tell me how to do some things better, feel free! I enjoy getting expert critiques as it helps clarify my coding practices. As a side issue, perhaps we might want to add a new system segment to Z-System for graphics commands or add them to our RCPs. For myself, running ZCPR 3.3, and loading my RCP as an RSX below the CCP, RCP size is not problem and I routinely switch between RCPs and even drop them altogether when needed. I understand that NZ-COM and ZCPR 3.4 users have even more flexibility in this regard, so I will await your comments on this idea. It is also possible, for instance, that the user community might want a single, general-purpose, graphic script program that draws everything based upon user input. I, personally, don't like that idea as I believe that the small tools approach of Z-System (and Unix, from whence it came) represent the best philosophy when it comes to software engineering. So, pull the Graphic Script Tools out and have at it. Let me know what you want to do with them and what features they need or shouldn't have and I'll see what I can do about implementing them.